Climate Change Debate as a “contact Zone”

Gaby Pazmino

EN 101

Professor Sherman

Essay 2

Climate Change Debate as a “Contact Zone”

        Pratt defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”.  Pratt says contact zones are important for literacy and she uses an example of her son trading baseball cards to back this up.  Similar to Guaman Poma’s letter to his Spanish conquerors, which was not read for years because of the language barrier, the scientific debate about climate change could be considered a contact zone.  This is because of the difference in language and the means of communicating that language in simpler terms to the general public.  

        Pratt opens up her essay with a story of her son and his interaction with baseball cards.  Her son, Sam, learned a lot just by playing with baseball cards.  Although her son did not understand the baseball language, he worked on his phonics by spelling out player’s names as well as his arithmetic skills, his social skills, and his history knowledge.  Pratt uses this example of a contact zone to introduce the concept in a simpler way. This concept relates to the climate change debate and the difficulties scientists face when informing the general public on their research in similar terms.

In order to fully understand Pratt’s concept of “contact zones”, it is important to know the difference between community and contact.  “The idea of the contact zone is intended in part of contrast with ideas of community that underlie much of the linking about language, communication, and culture that gets done in the academy” (Pratt).  Pratt introduces a book by the author Benedict Anderson.  Anderson talks about imaginary communities, although Pratt argues that these imaginary communities are “strongly utopian”, meaning “embodying values like equality, fraternity, liberty, which the societies often profess but systematically fail to realize.”  Pratt believes that the classroom should not function as a homogenous community, but rather like a contact zone.

Similar to Guaman Poma’s letter, is the scientific debate about climate change.  As in most debates, there are two major sides to this scientific debate.  “One side argues that the current global warming is caused by human factors while the other side insists it is occurring because of natural forces” (Herath).  The two main natural causes that are discussed are solar changes and changes to the Earth’s orbit.  The impact of the Sun on the Earth’s climate has been studied for years, but recently a significant amount of research has been done to find out how much of an impact it truly has.  “Variations in the Sun’s energy output has an impact on changes in Earth’s climate” (Herath).  Although the Sun does have an impact on the Earth’s climate change, it isn’t the only reason for the climate change.  

The shift in the Earth’s orbit could also be the reason for the Earth’s climate change.  The Earth’s orbital tilt is said to vary between twenty-two and twenty-five degrees roughly every 41,000 years.  This could bring about major changes in Earth’s climate, which is seen with the Sahara desert.  “There is a wide acceptance among scientists that the Sahara transformed from a fertile grassland to a desert because of a change to the Earth’s orbit.  This shift in how the Earth circled the Sun affected the amount of sunlight that region of Africa received” (Herath).  

Many scientists believe that human activity is the biggest contributor to the Earth’s climate change.  “We are changing the Earth’s atmosphere by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, most of which comes from the burning of fossil fuels” (Herath).  Other human activities that could cause this climate change are agriculture and changes in land-use patterns, which traps more heat than heat released.  

It is clear that the scientific debate about climate change can be seen as a contact zone by understanding Guaman Poma’s letter and why it is considered a contact zone.  Guaman Poma attempted to speak to his Spanish conquerors with a letter that was written in a mixture of Quecha and ungrammatical, expressive Spanish.  Richard Pietschmann, a Peruvianist, found this letter when he was exploring.  According to Pratt, Guaman Poma wrote a “heterogeneous” letter because it consisted of written text and captioned line drawings that people were not familiar with.  The letter “means differently to bilingual Spanish-Quecha speakers and to monolingual speakers in either language; the drawings mean differently to monocultural readers, Spanish or Andean, and to bicultural readers.”  Because Quecha was not thought of as a written language in 1908, it was difficult for people to read and understand his letter.  No one ever read Guaman Poma’s letter until years later.